An Evaluation of the Community College Studies Program for the Year 1969-70.

Losak, John; Burns, Neil

This was the first phase of a continuing evaluation of a Community College Studies Program designed to provide educational opportunities for the academically under-prepared student. The subject college had always had a remedial program of some type, but it only recently conducted formal program evaluations. The most recent was during the 1967-68 academic year. Using a randomly-selected control group for comparison purposes, the study demonstrated that the effects of remedial efforts were virtually indistinguishable from those obtained in the regular college courses. As a result of those findings, it became necessary to make a choice--either to eliminate remedial efforts or to restructure them to produce measurable differences. The latter was chosen and long-range evaluation was included in the program. This culminated in the Community College Studies Program (CCS), begun in the 1969 fall term. Discussions of the evaluation design and procedure centered on: (1) selection of population, (2) selection of tests, and (3) selection of research design. The evaluation results were discussed according to (1) a 16 personality factor test, (2) a self-rating scale, (3) a deviation score, (4) the Florida Twelfth Grade Test, (5) attrition, (6) the distribution of grades, and (7) a college student questionnaire. Program organization and a detailed description of it were included in the appendix. (Author/AL)